I recently came across a post on facebook that portrayed the images of many of today's mainline prosperity preachers. Under each picture was written their individual net worth. The values ranges from just over 1 million dollars to 1 billion dollars. These values did not surprise me and only made me shake my head, but some of the comments under the post caught my eye. I realized from these few comments what a huge negative impact these heresies are making on both the true christian community as well as the world. It is a real shame that the reason these people are so rich is that they preach a false, unbiblical, doctrine that gives people the false hope of riches and healing if they only will show their great faith by contributing to god's work. In any other case I would always capitalize God, but in this case the true God is not the subject. Indeed the Bible is correct and saying that the love of money is the root of all evil and it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than the rich man to enter the kingdom of God. The point of this article however is not to expose the ridiculous heresy of these false preachers in comparison to the Bible, but to help people have the discernment to not throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. I here comments like "this is exactly why I don't go to church, all they want is money" an " If I want to worship God I will go out into mother nature" or even "I don't know why I would want to go to church, there just a bunch of hypocrites".
Well let me tell you friends first of all that all churches have hypocrites no matter if they preach truth or heresy. The fact is that those that make Jesus Christ Lord of their life are indeed sinners and do not become instantly perfect. There are even people that go to good Bible believing churches that could care less really about Christ and are only their for image and to ease their troubled conscience. When a person is regenerated by faith in Jesus they do not instantly become perfect, it is a life long process called sanctification where we battle our sinful nature to do what God deems as right with the help of the Holy Spirit.
It is a dire mistake to put all churches and all "Christians" under the same blanket. A Christian is a true follower of Jesus Christ that makes him lord of their life, and their chief end is to be obedient to him and bring him glory. Just because one says they are a christian does not mean that they are a true christian. If I read in the news about an auto body shop that is a fraud and does sub par work, I don't assume that all auto body shops are worthless. I have recently ready of school teachers who have sexually abuse their students, yet I do not view all school teachers as evil predators. We constantly hear of crooked business men who take advantage of the poor, and use lawyers to manipulate the government in their favor, yet there are far more business men that are legitimate and upright. So also there are many churches that do not not have truth or Christ as their aim, yet that does not include all churches. It is a mistake to throw away true Christians with the multitude of false Christians.
I truly love to see the glories of God's creation in nature and view his handiwork. In fact in the Bible it says that God uses his creation to bear witness to all men that he exists. We call this natural or general revelation. But it just simply isn't enough to believe that God exists. The Bible tells us that even Satan and his fallen angels believe that God exists. By the grace of God, He also reveals himself to us in the Bible by the writing of men that He inspired with his very thoughts and voice. In these scriptures is how we know what God expects of us, how we can be saved, how we can be condemned, how we can know his character, how we are to live, and every other aspect of life you can think of. There is no matter in life in which the Bible is silent. To know and worship God and make His Son Jesus the Lord of your life, you need the scriptures. This is God's special revelation to us. If you think that there is some mythical set of scales at the end of life that God is going to weigh out your good deeds to your bad and hope for a heavenly entrance, you are mistaken friend.
If we lived an absolutely perfect life from our very birth, that would meet only the minimum of what our perfect God requires from us. For no unrighteousness can enter his kingdom. But by his great grace and mercy he sacrificed his own Son to make a way that we may become righteous in his sight. In fact Jesus said " I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the father but by me. Without making Jesus the point of our lives, and center our life directly on Him then there is no need to go to church and there is no need to worship God. He is not interested in being anything except everything to you.
True Christians come together to worship the great God that saves their souls, helps them live better lives, and to strengthen each other against the attacks of this evil world. Christians gathering together are like coals in a fire. If you take one coal out it soon looses its heat and goes black, but if you keep the coals together they stay hot and bright. A true Christian church does take up an offering only to support the spread of God's word through missionaries, keeping up a building to worship in, and to pay a pastor to make it his full time job to keep the church united, healthy, and growing.
The simple fact of the matter in the end is this. The only absolute truth we have in this world is that which is revealed to us by God in his Scriptures. Any other belief about how one might fare in the afterlife is but a contraption invented by men. I'm not willing to put my soul in the hands of men but only in the hands of God.
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